Maersk has announced the construction of its new cold store in St. Petersburg, highlighting Russia’s high demand. The facility will offer separate storage chambers for frozen produce (-25°C), chilled (+2/+8°C), as well as for bananas, which require a specific temperature of +13°C. The warehouse’s maximum storage capacity will be over 50 000 tons and the fully Maersk-operated warehouse will employ over 200 employees.
The ceremony took place on Wednesday, June 5, in St. Petersburg, Russia in the presence of Maersk CEO Søren Skou, Fyffes CEO David McCann and representatives of regional and federal Russian administration.
PNK Group was responsible for the construction of the warehouse, which is located within the PNK Park Sofiyskaya KAD in St. Petersburg and has 23 700 square metres, with 35 docks able to serve daily throughput of up to 200 trucks.
In addition, Fyffes, a European leading fruit company, will hold about 40% of the warehouse, whereas the remaining 60% will be available for customers coming from the fresh and frozen sector.
Increased consumption requires specialised logistics for transportation, but also for storage of produce, allowing imported perishable goods to remain fresh for a longer time until they reach their end consumers.
Zsolt Katona, Managing Director for Eastern Europe at Maersk commented
I am extremely proud of this project, which is the first such cold store on the Russian market. As Maersk, we are committed to helping our reefer customers in all aspects of their supply chain needs. Those needs go well beyond transportation and storage is a crucial element we are now addressing.
According to Maersk, since 2017 Russia has been the second largest importer of bananas in the world, surpassing Germany and following the US. Moreover, in 2018, fruit imports in Russia increased, with banana imports going up by 1%, citrus fruits by 7.4% and apples by nearly 13.5% compared to the year before. Experts expect fruit imports to continue to increase also in the coming years.
